


glass accident

by janie_tangerine



Series: jbweek 2018 [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brienne is the Best, Catharsis Ending, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Childhood Trauma, Dyslexia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Fluff, F/M, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Jaime/Brienne Appreciation Week, Panic Attacks, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting, how to traumatize your kids with perfectly innocent crystal: a lesson by tywin lannister, is2g this is fluffier than it souns, no really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 13:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16160072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “My father, hm, he happens to be a regular client of Waterford’s. I mean, the crystals factory.”“Okay,” she says, hoping this isn’t going where she thinks it’s going.“His entire damned house is filled with that stuff. Like, glass everywhere. He eats from crystal plates, for — well, I might have spent years with cold sweat every time I had to have dinner with him because of course he wouldn’t settle for less and I was scared shitless I’d break one of the plates. Anyway, when I was twelve, my brother happened to break one of those vases of his.”… This is going exactly where she was thinking it would, damn it, and — she’s met Tyrion. She thinks she has a clue of how badly Tywin Lannister would have taken it if he found out he broke the thing.“Since I knew my father would have been way less terrible to me than to him,” Jaime sighs, “I, uh, said it was my fault.”“He didn’t —”“He made me pick the whole thing up with bare hands,” Jaime says, sounding entirely too detached about it for it to be remotely healthy.“What the fuck,” she blurts without even trying to stop herself.





	glass accident

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO and welcome to jbweek fic two posted at the height of 1.20 am because I don't have time for it tomorrow. Ops.
> 
> Now, this was for the day two prompt ie _smith_. ... Take this as it is but hey, he fixes broken things *and* he's about craft, right? Well. Here we go. TAKE IT AS VAGUELY AS IT IS. /o\
> 
> Spoilers: I got the idea for this thing when this year I was on vacation in Ireland and went to visit the [Waterford crystal factory](https://www.waterfordvisitorcentre.com/waterford-crystal-factory-tour) which was an absolutely lovely place that I LOVED visiting but half of the time I could just think 'fuck Tywin would so spend a bunch of money buying this stuff also because who else can even afford 42-euros shot glasses' and this happened. Jaime I'm honestly sorry I swear tomorrow's fic will be better for your health. Anyway: those crystals are absolutely great and that place is awesome just in case someone thought I didn't like it xD
> 
> Also: guys, please heed the tags this thing especially in the beginning is an angstfest, I warned you.
> 
> Other than that: nothing is mine (the characters are GRRM's and be assured I can't even afford the 42 euros shot glasses) and the title is from a Neil Young song. I shall now go saunter vaguely downwards again SORRY FOR THE DUMP OF ANGST tomorrow it's crack day pretty much 100%. ;)

 

_One_

 

Fact is: Jaime _hates_ the damned Waterford crystals.

They’re all over the house and he doesn’t remember them ever _not_ having been, except that every year it’s more of them — glasses, vases, _plates_ , chandeliers, small statues and so on, — and he has absolutely no interest in finding out what would happen if either he or Cersei or Tyrion broke one of them.

Given that his father only ever told them once that _there would have been consequences_ if it happened, and that Jaime was four when he did and he remembers it vividly enough that he sometimes he dreams about it at night, he thinks it would be a colossally bad idea.

Cersei _loves_ them, admittedly. She can’t stop talking about how pretty and shiny they are, and she always handles them with extra caution, and she always talks about how when she’s older she’s going to choose what to order next with Father and so on, and of course she absolutely treasures the customized gold and red crystal glass she received for her tenth birthday — well, it was a matched set, and Jaime also got his, but that’s the only one in the entire house he’s ever even handled and he does it _very_ reluctantly. He can’t help thinking that he might drop it, and every time he touches it he can feel his fingers minutely shaking, and maybe it’s also because the one time one of those glasses broke in the house, it was when his mother was holding it right as she fainted, hours before she died, but —

Well, among the reasons why he spends a _lot_ of his time in his brother’s room to do _anything_ , there’s also the fact that it’s the one place in the entire house with no crystals in sight.

(He and Cersei also technically own a couple of little glass statues, a lion for him and a lioness for her, that their father commissioned the factory when they were born. They’re exposed in a small china cabinet in the living room, of course. Tyrion never got one. Jaime is not surprised about _that_.)

There’s a shipment directly from Waterford every couple of months. Most of the time, it’s standard pieces off the catalogue, but a couple times per year, it’s personalized plates or vases or small statues.

Jaime really, _really_ gets the creeps whenever he walks past the crystal lion with golden decorations right at the entrance of the house, one of the newest pieces. Cersei is positively enamored with the thing, running her long, thin fingers over the surface.

He’s never even touched it. He can’t help feeling like just brushing his (larger, bigger) fingers against it might shatter the thing, even if he knows it’s made of _heavy_ crystal, but — no. He thinks he’ll pass.

——

He maintains that vow he made to himself that no one else knows about until he’s twelve.

Not that he actually breaks it _himself_.

But he comes back from school one day, _thankfully_ without Cersei because she stayed behind for the drama club ( _he_ doesn’t do that kind of thing, not when he can barely keep up with his damned reading, but it’s not as if his father ever listened to him when he said he had troubles with it, after all, and he just gave up) and _thankfully_ on one day when his father is out, to hear someone crying from the living room.

Scratch that, it’s Tyrion, not _someone_.

What the _hell_ , Jaime thinks as he runs there, wondering what even happened — usually the nanny his father hired especially to keep an eye on him in the morning because _of course_ he had absolutely refused to send him to kindergarten with other kids when if you ask Jaime it’d have just improved his life (but _his father feels ashamed_ , of course) leaves at about the time he comes back, but today he was some ten minutes late.

And the first thing he thinks as he walks into the living room is _fuck_ ten times over, because Tyrion is indeed standing in tears over the pieces of this one vase that had been placed on the ground rather than any of the shelves or more suited surfaces, and — _fuck_ , it wasn’t one of the customized pieces, small mercies, but it was some extremely fragile piece made to celebrate some kinda political anniversary in the Seventies, and he knows his father paid a shitload of money for it in a bid.

And _fuck_ , he tried to pick up the pieces but he cut one of his hands — at least it’s shallow, but it’s not much of a damned consolation.

“I’m sorry,” Tyrion says, “I —”

“Never mind,” Jaime says, “don’t move, I’ll go get — something for that hand.”

He runs out of the room, dumps his backpack in the first free corner, finds a first aid kit in the first bathroom nearby, then runs back to the living room with gauze and hydrogen peroxide.

“Right. Just, move out of the pieces,” Jaime says, motioning for Tyrion to stand back. He takes his tiny hand in between his — yeah, it’s shallow. Good. “Okay,” he says, “that — doesn’t look too bad. Just let me wrap it up.” Tyrion nods, his lip trembling, and Jaime tries to not look at him in the eyes as he disinfects the cut and wraps it up in gauze, wondering what the hell are they going to do about this now.

“Okay,” he says as he finishes, “ _how_ did that happen?”

Tyrion looks down with misery at his feet. “I came back from the bathroom and — I tripped?”

 _Of course_ , that’s how it happened. Jaime _has_ tried to tell his father that it _might_ be the case to call up some doctor specialized in — he doesn’t even know the name but it’s been obvious since years that Tyrion’s not walking _right_ for obvious reasons, and of course every time he tried it was as if he hadn’t even spoken. Because his father _still_ doesn’t want to admit that he has to do _something_ about it.

And _of course_ he tripped into the damned vase.

Fuck.

“Hey,” he says, putting an arm around him, “it wasn’t your fault. If anything it’s _his_ , since — never mind. It’s not important at this point.”

“What — what do I tell him now?”

Thing is: Tyrion looks terrified and of _course_ he does, given that their father gave him that same crystals-related pep talk he gave Jaime and Cersei and at least… well, _technically_ he doesn’t blame either of them for his wife’s death.

(It’s bullshit, if you ask Jaime — it was an aneurysm and no one could do anything about it and the fact that it happened a week after Tyrion was born doesn’t mean the two things were linked, but he has a feeling his father just needed to blame _something_ or someone, and — he did, didn’t he?)

There’s no way that if he tells the truth this ends well. Cersei would probably say to blame it on the nanny, but then again Cersei wouldn’t even lie about it and honestly, the poor woman doesn’t deserve to lose her job and possibly never be hired by anyone else for the rest of her life because they needed someone to blame for it.

Shit. His father is going to be home in five minutes tops and _he_ is never late.

Jaime looks down at the fine, thin pieces of shattered crystal glass.

 _To hell with it,_ he thinks. _Better me than him_.

He reaches down grabs one of them and cuts his own palm with it.

“What are you _doing_?” Tyrion asks him a moment later, crying all over again.

“Hey, don’t,” Jaime says. “Stop crying, if he sees it he’s going to know.”

“He’s… going to know?”

“Come on, wipe your eyes. When he comes back we’re telling him that _I_ did it and you cut your hand trying to help me, okay?”

“But —”

“ _Whatever_ he does, it’s better if it happens to me. If you don’t want to lie just don’t say anything at all, all right?”

“It’s not right —”

“Well, fuck that, it wasn’t your fault and he’s — never mind. Just do it, okay?”

“… Okay,” Tyrion says, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. “Thank you,” he goes on, in such a tiny voice that Jaime wants to say it’s not right that he has to sound like this —

But he can’t tell him because the door opens a moment later.

 _Here it goes_ , Jaime thinks, standing up and trying to keep his back straight if anything to try and find some confidence.

Of course, when his father walks into the room and glances at the disaster at their feet, he’s _not_ at all pleased. Actually, the moment he looks at _them_ , Jaime thinks he’s never seen him so pissed off in his entire life.

“What is _this_ ,” he says, not even asking.

He clears his throat. “It was my fault,” he says. “I put my foot wrong and I crashed into it, he heard it and he tried to pick the pieces up.”

Tyrion thankfully keeps his mouth shut, but given that Jaime can feel that he’s shaking behind him, he’s probably too terrified to even contradict him.

Good, honestly.

“Really,” his father says.

“I swear,” Jaime says, raising up his hands, bleeding palm and all.

“Very well,” his father says a moment later, and shit, he’s _angry_ , he can hear it. “ _You_ ,” he says nodding towards Tyrion, “ _leave_.”

“Go,” Jaime mouths at him, “I’ll be fine.”

 _I hope so_ , _anyway_.

Tyrion waits a moment, then he does the smart thing and runs out of the room, as fast as his too-small legs might carry him.

“Now, about _that_ ,” he hisses, and Jaime just hopes that this mess ends quickly. He doesn’t even hope for painlessly, because _that_?

Not going to happen, he has a feeling.

——

Three hours later, he knocks on Tyrion’s door with his elbow, wishing he could _not_ do it, but — of course Cersei refused to help him with his current problem and the maid is under direct orders to _not_ help him out, and she won’t because she needs the job, so —

Tyrion it has to be.

“Hey,” he says, “it’s me.”

The door opens a moment later, enough to let him pass.

Tyrion closes the door as soon as he passes through, and then he turns to look at him, or better, at his _hands_ , which are technically just below his eye level.

“… _What_ did he do?” He says, staring at his openly bleeding fingers — he’s holding the first aid kit with a towel around the grip so he doesn’t get it everywhere, and he’s trying to keep his right as still as possible.

He considers lying, but what could he even say?

“I had to pick up all the pieces. By hand,” he says, trying to make it sound as it’s nothing _that_ terrible. “And —” He blinks, trying to keep himself together, damn it, “Cersei didn’t want anything to do with this, so — do you think you could help me out here?” Shit, he’s this close to sounding hysterical and he’s asking his five year old brother to _bandage his damned hands_ , but what should he even do?

To his credit, though, Tyrion doesn’t even think about it. “Yes,” he says, “I mean, it’s my fault if — if that happened. What do I do?”

Jaime eyes an empty corner without any damned Persian rug underneath, then goes to sit there — at least if he bleeds on the ground it’ll be _the ground_. “Uh, you should probably get — some water, I guess. Shit, I didn’t think about it —”

“I’ll ask Jeyne,” Tyrion interrupts him. Right. She’s not on orders to not help _him_ get some water since he can’t reach the sink, after all.

“Do it then.”

“I’ll be right back,” Tyrion says, and he runs out of the room.

Jaime grabs harder at the towels and doesn’t think about how his left hand is hurting all over but his right is _not_ even if he lost way more blood from that one.

——

Tyrion comes back with a basin half as tall as he is some five minutes later, but he seems determined to do it, so Jaime says nothing until he dumps it to his side. He sticks both his hands inside the cold water, sees it turn dark pink as he tries to not throw up, and when they’re clean enough he instructs Tyrion on how to disinfect the cuts and bandage them. It’s not the neatest job, in the end, but it’s good enough and it holds, and he still can’t feel _shit_ in his right and he can’t bend the fingers as well as the left, but — it’s probably a side effect, he decides.

Has to be.

When they’re _finally_ done, he lets his hands drop in between his knees. “Well, at least it’s over,” he says, trying to sound… well, somewhat cheerful.

Tyrion just _stares_ at him like he can’t even begin to guess _why_ he would.

“He ruined your hands,” he finally says, and — yeah, _well_ , he’s too smart for his own good and pretending _anything_ with him hasn’t really worked that well for the last two years or so. There’s no way he can minimize this.

“Nah,” he says, “they’ll scar at some point. Really, I’m okay.” Or better: he’s _not_ , but he knows he got off lightly in comparison to what would have happened if they told the truth or if he hadn’t come home in time, and honestly, even if they had, better to _him_ than to Tyrion, especially given that he doubts he’d have managed to pick up all of those blasted pieces of glass with those small, soft hands in the time it took _him_ , and who knows if he’d have ended up hurting himself worse.

Never mind that like hell it’d have stopped _there_ , so.

“You don’t have to lie, you know,” Tyrion answers him, sounding _way_ older than he has any right to.

“I’m not —”

“Your eyes are red and you have blood on your _face_ , and I never saw you cry before now,” Tyrion interrupts him.

Well, _shit_.

“Okay, fine, I’m not okay, I feel terrible, I’m not feeling anything with the right hand and it’s been a fucking shitty day, _but_ I’m not regretting it because like hell I wanted _this_ to happen to you, so — we’ll see what happens now, we’re steering clear of the damned things from now on and everything’s going to work out, all right?”

“But if your hand is _that_ hurt shouldn’t you call a doctor?”

 _As if it was an option_. “I’m sure it’s only temporary,” Jaime says, forcing himself to smile. “Really.”

“You’re still lying, but thank you,” Tyrion says, sounding like he’s going to cry, too, and Jaime is too tired to tell him not to even if he should, but then Tyrion shakes his head and takes a couple of steps forward and hugs him, and fuck it, maybe _he_ needs it, too, and he gingerly reciprocates it because of course it even hurts his hands to do it as they are.

Fuck, he really doesn’t feel like going back to the room he shares with Cersei.

“You mind if I sleep here tonight?” He blurts a moment later.

“No,” Tyrion answers without hesitation, and hell, he sounds _happy_ that he asked?

Jaime barely even can make sense of what’s going inside his own head, but he knows _one_ thing for sure. The moment he moves out of this house, _whenever_ that is, he’s not _ever_ having to deal with any fucking crystal or breakable object if it kills him.

 

_Two_

 

“You know,” Bronn starts, sounding like he’s threading _very_ carefully here, and Jaime has a feeling Tyrion actually _did_ spill to him about the damned fucking Waterford vase, but — he also had sworn he never would to _anyone_ , and he does keep his promises, different from… most of their other relatives, he thinks bitterly.

“Yeah? Is there a problem?” Jaime asks, opening the last of his boxes — he wishes he could have just done this whole move himself, but his right hand’s been more or less fucked up since that time with the hellish vase, and so he’s had to ask his brother’s best friend who is also his by proxy.

(Turns out, he had cut a nerve or two. Turns out, a few weeks after the fact his father finally had to face it and had to call a doctor. Turns out, it was too late for his hand to heal properly.)

It’s probably sad that _everyone_ he knows (not that many people) that he doesn’t hate or dislike was through his brother, never mind that of course when Tyrion went to high school he befriended people in the _last_ year and that’s how his _best friend is almost as old as he is_. Then again, at least he had _some_ friends. There’s _that_ one exception, of course, but —

“You _are_ aware that we’ve been moving boxes and shit for five days and I haven’t seen a single plate or glass in your kitchen stuff?”

Ah, _that_.

“I am,” Jaime says, “and before you wonder what kind of barbarian I am, I use plastic.”

“… What,” Bronn says, staring at him.

Okay, Tyrion _did_ keep his mouth shut.

“Why, can’t a man use plastic plates if he wants to?” For that matter, when he finally left home for university, it was so _fucking freeing_ to switch to plastic that he never wants to go back again. There’s a reason why he doesn’t have one single item of glass in the entire apartment.

“Not against the law,” Bronn agrees, even if he doesn’t sound too convinced. “But like, you know it’s a lot of trash?”

“So what?”

“You know it means your trash bills will be out of the world high?”

“Who cares? I can pay them.”

Bronn keeps on looking _not_ convinced at all, but then he shrugs. “Ah, well, it’s your place, I’ve met people with weirder quirks.” He leaves it there, _thank fuck_ , and Jaime knows it’s kind of ridiculous, but —

He looks down at the palm of his right hand. It’s a white criss-cross of scarring _still_. He tries to bend his fingers. It works just partially and if he touches the table, he can’t feel if it’s cold or warm or _whatever else_.

Yeah, well, he figures that’s not going to get fixed anytime soon. He stares at his walls — he covered all of them in movie posters and so on, but he hasn’t framed any single one of them, and the few family pictures he had the force of will to put on display (not many) are all framed in plastic.

The only glass around _his_ damned house is going to be the windows’s, and as far as he’s concerned it’s not going to change anytime soon.

If it’s illogical, he _knows_.

But now that he’s finally out of his father’s place for good along with all those damned fucking fragile crystals that looked like they’d break if you just stared at them hard enough, he’s going to avoid _all_ of that shit, and he’s going to enjoy every single moment of it.

 

_Three_

 

 _Fuck me sideways if I get this wrong_ , Jaime thinks as he rings on _her_ intercom. The door buzzes open and he walks inside the building, hoping that his hands aren’t sweating around the cupcakes box he’s brought over for dessert.

Mostly, he doesn’t want to get this wrong because he _technically almost has once_.

Rewind: the first time he and Brienne Tarth met, it was a complete disaster. It was when he was at the second year of university and realized that his abysmal reading skills — he got _better_ , but not enough — might have not been his downfall in the first year for some miracle, but they _would_ be in this one, if he didn’t do anything about it.

And given that he had to fight tooth and nail with his father to _not_ study economics _and_ eventually he ended up paying for it with his trust fund money, and that he wanted to prove him wrong, he had sucked it up, went to the local counselor and told her the matter. The woman had arranged for him to spend some time with another student tutoring him and the moment he found out the person in question was a first year speech therapy student who went into it _specifically_ to help out dyslexic kids he had felt humiliated beyond belief for _idiotic_ reasons, because after all that was what he had avoided dealing with all his life, wasn’t it?

Then the student in question had turned out to be slightly taller than him, with a sour, unattractive face ( _how_ did she break her nose, he had asked himself for sure), blotchy freckles all over her pale skin, straw blonde hair and an almost flat chest she tried to hide with excellent results. The only remarkable thing about her had been her pretty blue eyes, large and of a lovely, clear shade that was about the same of the sky on a bright summer day, but that was about it.

Admittedly, it had been the end of an already horrid day and he had treated her like shit and she hadn’t exactly taken it without telling him that if that was his attitude, as far as she was concerned he could fail the entirety of his classes before slamming the door on him.

He had wholly deserved it, honestly. Maybe if Cersei hadn’t spent years making him feel like he’d have been some kind of weakling if he asked anyone else help with something that should have come naturally to him he’d have been less terrible about it, but he’s never going to know.

Anyway, he had realized he had been an ass to her after two days of agonizing over it, and that she had _genuinely_ tried to help, and that he _did_ need it as much as he wished he couldn’t, so he had found her the next day and apologized, probably _badly_ because he doesn’t have much experience with it, but sincerely enough that she told him to just come back the next time they should have seen each other in the first place. It took him two months to realize that she _did_ have a sense of humor under the all business exterior (or better, she didn’t _have_ one on her own but she could laugh at his, sometimes), it took him three to notice that one day she had come in looking upset and to find out that someone in her class asked her out as a joke (he told her he’d buy her a beer in consolation and found out they both rooted for the same football team when they were both tipsy), it took him five to find out she was actually a miracle worker because he didn’t fail a single final _and_ her advice actually paid off (he had bought her _another_ beer and she hadn’t refused) and it took him the entire school year to realize that for the first time in his life he had successfully befriended someone who wasn’t into it for the money.

They stayed friends after that, even if he didn’t need him tutoring anymore, and when one day he realized he was actually into her his first thought had been to not even try to do anything about it, not when she had told him she had sworn off dating.

Except that he never was that great at keeping that kind of proposition, so he did tell her after his brother nagged him to do it for the entirety of the next school year, and of course she hadn’t believed him at first, and then she had about cried in relief when she realized he meant it before they kissed, and then she said that maybe he could come at her place for dinner to celebrate that evening, and so now he’s at her doorstep, without flowers (as she ordered, because apparently they were involved in all her previous attempts at dating shitty people) and with dessert (she’s actually good at baking but her oven’s broken and she hasn’t fixed it yet), and fuck but he _doesn’t_ want to get this wrong, not when he had to sweat it to get her to believe him and when… well, he might not be what anyone would want to show them how fucking stupid their previous _dates_ were, but he’s entirely bent on trying.

Maybe he does want a _serious_ thing after so many years of _nothing_ , especially because he knows that Cersei made sure that every time he ever tried with anyone else it failed.

He shakes his head and rings the doorbell.

“Wow, you’re on time for once?” She opens the door, smiling slightly.

“Hey, when have I ever — fair, all the time,” he admits — he _did_ have a shitty habit of arriving at tutoring later than he should have. He also notices that she has dressed… _better_ than usual. She has on her usual jeans and boots, but she’s wearing a tailored silk shirt that he’s seen on her… maybe on his graduation day. _Maybe_. And she put on a shade of make-up, even if not _that_ much.

Shit, he can’t believe she dressed up for _him._

“Yeah, well, I guess you _care_ this time,” she says, her cheeks flushing slightly, and right, _he_ is not the only one in the two of them with zero dating experience now, is he?

“I always do,” he says, and he hands her the cupcake box after shrugging off his jacket. She takes it and goes to hang it before giving him a small tour of the apartment. It’s nice and cozy — a bedroom, a living room, books everywhere (both textbooks and novels), an old record player with a stack of vinyls next to it, a few Van Gogh reproductions on the walls, blue sofa, blue sheets on the bed. It’s not too cluttered, either — honestly, it’s _exactly_ the kind of place he can imagine her living. The table is set in the living room, in the center of it.

Oh. She put _candles_ on it. For a moment, he feels like telling she shouldn’t have put that much effort, but then he realizes she went all the way for the _romantic_ dinner and he thinks that no, he’s going to keep his mouth shut.

“Anyway, just sit, I’ll bring over the appetizers.”

“You didn’t have to be _that_ classy about this,” he says, but she shakes her head.

“Lannister, since we said we’d _talk_ , I’ll say it just once.” Her cheeks are flaming red, but she _is_ staring at him. “I’ve _never_ even considered the day would come when I’d invite someone over for dinner for — well, _whatever_ this is, so I’m going to bloody do it properly, _all right_? Now go sit down already.”

“Fine, fine,” he says, raising his hands, “you win, I’m sitting.”

She smiles at him as she turns and goes to the kitchen, and he does sit down —

To find himself in front of… actual porcelain plates.

 _Shit_. He hasn’t used breakable plates for _years_ now, but he also didn’t even think about it because he usually doesn’t dinner at other people’s places for that exact reason, which means that he hadn’t even thought to tell her that she could have just stuck to plastic.

Shit, shit, _shit_. He takes a better look at them.

It’s — oh. It’s white china, with a nice, tasteful decoration with pale blue flowers. It doesn’t look _extremely_ pricey, or better, not for where he comes from, but it’s obvious she broke out the _nice_ plates.

Specifically for _this_ dinner.

He swallows, looking at the glass in front of him. It’s two blue ones, same shade as the flowers _and_ the tablecloth.

Hell, she really did put effort into this.

Well. He’s not going to fuck it up. It’s _plates_ , damn it. And not even crystal ones. He can handle, this, right?

Right.

——

She comes out of the kitchen with _prawn cocktails,_ shit, she really did put effort into it, and that goes reasonably well — the _other_ glass doesn’t break and he lets out a relieved breath when she brings them away. Everything goes well through the main course — she can make a mean chili, that’s for sure, and for a moment he’s almost sure this is going to end up _fine_ and he won’t be worrying about breaking the damned plate or whatever in a few, and they won’t need it for the cupcakes, so — it’s reasonably fine. And she’s really good at cooking, and she flushes when he tells her and she replies that no one ever gave her much credit for that because of course if you look like she does then you can’t cook.

He tells her most people she runs into are idiots, she laughs and agrees, they talk in the same easy way they have for the last few years, and he keeps on eating from the damned glass and he’s _almost_ forgot about it when she says she’ll bring out the dirty stuff to the kitchen so they can have the cupcakes.

Too bad that then he stands up to help her bring over the empty bottles to the kitchen and his elbow _hits the damned glass_.

He looks at it with horrified eyes as it shatters on the ground, not into that thousand pieces but _enough_ to make him wince, and suddenly he remembers not just that sea of shards at Tyrion’s feet but also one horrible row he had with Cersei after he realized that she ruined the reputation of this friend of hers at school because she dared giving him a Valentine’s card which had ended with Cersei throwing a regular, cheap kitchen glass behind his shoulder before storming out of the room. It had ended with Tyrion finding him completely frozen as he stood there — he cleaned it up and said he wouldn’t tell anyone about it, good thing that, but it had felt _horrible_ and he hates that sound, and his left is shaking so hard he has to lean on the chair, and fuck, fuck, _he broke the damned glass,_ why did he even do it, why did he have to be so fucking _stupid_ instead of looking at what he was doing, now she’s going to be pissed and she’s going to be right, she even put out the _nice_ ones, damn it —

“Jaime?”

He should leave, he should just excuse himself and do it before he throws up at the sound her shoes make as they crush another piece of glass —

“Jaime?”

Wait, is she calling him?

——

“Jaime, _what’s wrong_?” Brienne asks for the third time, and then he finally seems to hear her and looks back at her, and —

All right.

Whatever is wrong here it has to be a _lot_ , because she _had_ sensed that he was slightly nervous when they sat down to eat, but — she thinks she’s known him long enough to be sure it wasn’t because of her or because he might be having second thoughts, he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t _want_ to. It was clear enough, and that was also why she had decided it couldn’t be a joke, she’s known him for too long to get _that_ wrong. So — well, _she_ had been nervous as well when she said she was into him, too, but she _never_ had been in a serious relationship, and he had told her about his sister pretty much sabotaging all of his attempt at relationships, so she knows it’s a first for him, too, so she had figured they were nervous for the same reason.

But now he’s ashen pale and he looks like he’s going to throw up at any moment and it was just a stupid glass breaking, as if she has never broken one in her entire life or as if she would give a damn.

“I’m sorry,” he says immediately, and — _what the fuck_ , he’s only ever apologized to her that _one_ time after their first botched tutoring session. And he’s glancing at the ground like the damned glass is going to eat him alive.

She shakes his head, takes his arm as gently as possible and drags his to the nearby sofa, making him sit, and then she sits next to him, still keeping a hand on his elbow.

“For _what_ ,” she says, trying to keep her voice calm instead of showing how fucking worried she is.

He looks at her as if she’s grown two heads. “For — breaking that,” he says, not sounding like his usual at all.

“Jaime,” she says, “it’s _nothing_.”

“… What?”

“I bought that at the supermarket around the corner. It was a set of _six_. If I want to replace it, I just have to go downstairs and ask them. And I think that if you do the math, I paid at most three quid for it. It _happens_ , I’m — I’m not mad or anything.”

“You’re… not?” He sounds like he’s honestly shocked that she isn’t, and she wants to ask, _who the fuck cares that much about a damned cheap glass_ , but — there’s obviously something behind this that she doesn’t know.

And that she’s one hundred percent sure she will _not_ like when she learns.

Good grief, there’s cold sweat all over his forehead and his damned hands are sweating, too. She shakes her head, tentatively wraps her fingers around his own, immediately noticing _how_ exactly his palm feels weird — they never held hands before, and now that she thinks about it he wears gloves a lot of the time, and _why is it covered in fucking scars_?

“Jaime, I can’t give a single bloody fuck about that glass and I give way more fucks about how you look like you’re going to faint, so — you know what, just, I’ll clean that up and put on some tea while I do it and then we can talk this out, all right?”

“Okay,” he nods, sounding _entirely_ relieved about that prospect, “but — can you just give me mine in a plastic cup or _something_?”

“All right,” she agrees, figuring that if he has a problem with damned glass or breakable things in general it makes sense. She squeezes his hand, stands up and puts on some water in the boiler, then cleans up the glass from the ground and throws it in the trash before putting the tea to brew. She finds one of those travel mugs her father gave her as a housewarming gift — she doesn’t have plastic cups but that should be good, so she pours his into it and hers in a regular mug and brings them over to the table.

She thinks about the cupcakes he brought, too, but he looks like he’s going to throw up and maybe it’s not the best idea right now, so she places both on the table, takes a breath and takes a better look at him. Not counting _looking like he wants to vomit_ , at least he seems less nervous than before, but — still not what she had been hoping for.

“Hey,” she clears her throat. “That glass is in the trash. And I’m _not_ mad at you. Do you want to talk about it?” She tries to not sound demanding, especially because he really still looks like he could throw up at any moment. He grabs the travel mug with shaking fingers, taking a sip.

Then he puts it back on the table, opens up his right hand lets it fall on his leg. Now that she looks at it properly — fucking hell, it’s a crisscross of faded white scars, but a few are _deep_ , and in places where they definitely should _not_ be.

Wait, so _that_ was why he writes with his left and has terrible handwriting?

“My father, hm, he happens to be a regular client of Waterford’s. I mean, the crystals factory.”

“Okay,” she says, hoping this isn’t going where she thinks it’s going.

“His entire damned house is filled with that stuff. Like, glass everywhere. He eats from crystal plates, for — well, I might have spent years with cold sweat every time I had to have dinner with him because of course he wouldn’t settle for less and I was scared shitless I’d break one of the plates. Anyway, when I was twelve, my brother happened to break one of those vases of his.”

… This is going exactly where she was thinking it would, damn it, and — she’s met Tyrion. She thinks she has a clue of how badly Tywin Lannister would have taken it if he found out _he_ broke the thing.

“Since I knew my father would have been way less terrible to _me_ than to him,” Jaime sighs, “I, uh, said it was my fault.”

“He _didn’t_ —”

“He made me pick the whole thing up with bare hands,” Jaime says, sounding _entirely_ too detached about it for it to be remotely healthy.

“What the _fuck_ ,” she blurts without even trying to stop herself.

“Yeah, well, still better than if it had happened to _him_. Long story short, I cut a nerve and that’s why I write with the left and my handwriting sucks ass, and — uh, I probably didn’t tell you that in a few occasions my sister resorted to throwing a few plates or glasses at me. I mean, the occasions when she didn’t want me to argue with her any further, since she prefers it when we _don’t_ and she dictates how things should go.”

“And she _knew_?”

“Sure she knew,” he says, and now he sounds _bitter_ , but it’s better than the flat tone from before. “And — long story short, that’s why I haven’t used plates or glasses that can get broken since I left home.”

“So… _that_ was why you were… openly worrying out the moment you saw the table?”

“Maybe,” he admits. “It’s just — I know you put effort into that dinner and I noticed you had brought out _nice_ plates and I didn’t want to, you know, ruin it or anything, but — I think I _really_ am shit at handling broken stuff,” he says, obviously trying to joke about it, but it’s not really working too well.

Good grief, is she had known she’d have never gone with the china, but of course he wouldn’t tell her. For that matter, he sounds like he’s feeling ashamed beyond belief that he had to tell her, but —

She shakes her head, reaching out and wrapping her fingers around his, and when she feels those scars again she feels sick to her stomach, knowing where that came from.

“You’d have all the rights to be,” she says.

“I — what?” He sounds surprised, as if _somehow_ that’s not the only acceptable answer.

“Jaime, for — any person with some basic decency would have just told you to pay more attention next time or maybe _asked themselves_ why would a five-year old trip into that vase in the first place because in my experience when that happens and they’re _five_ they _might_ have motor control issues, they wouldn’t make you pick back up the damned pieces and not even have a doctor see to it. And it must have taken an immense amount of guts to take the blame for that, so… I don’t know, I _can_ imagine why you’d rather avoid breakable stuff.”

He shrugs, his fingers grasping at hers even if they don’t bend _properly_. “I don’t know about _that_ but I knew that it’d have been ten times worse if it happened to him, so…” He shrugs. “But you really don’t mind?”

“Jaime, honestly, I spent months thinking I was being a complete masochist for having feelings for _you_ and that it was a miracle we were friends in the first place, and now you’re presuming I _mind_ that you freaked out for entirely good reasons after _accidentally_ breaking a glass that I paid two pounds and ninety-nine pence at the supermarket?”

“… Put it like _that_ ,” he says, his shoulders _finally_ relaxing, “maybe you have a point. Shit, and I thought for months that it was a miracle you even gave me a second chance with the tutoring.”

“Listen, I spent that entire damned year wondering how in hell someone whose parents _could_ have afforded some _good_ dyslexia treatment needed _my_ help, but now that I just heard that bullshit, I think a lot of my doubts are gone and honestly, _never_ introduce me to your father.”

He raises an eyebrow, and _now_ he looks a bit more like his usual. “And why’s that?”

“I’d probably give in to the urge of breaking his jaw _after_ breaking a few vases,” she admits, and he laughs, and damn but she’s so relieved that he’s not looking like he’s going to faint anymore, she has to do it too out of utter relief.

“Hey,” she tells him, “maybe we _should_ eat some of those cupcakes?”

“You know what, _yes_ , I think I need to eat something without worrying about throwing it up if the plate falls down,” he says, and she pretends to find it funny as she hands him the box, but —

But that does _not_ sound good.

Not at all.

 

_Four_

 

“What is even this mystery?” Jaime asks her her as she drives on. “I mean, I’m always down with birthday surprises, but we’ve been driving two hours by now and you’re _not_ going to the seaside.”

“We’re not,” she says, “but there’s a reason why.”

“Fair,” he says, leaning back in the seat. “And hey, whatever it is, at least you gave me a chance to opt out from the bloody _birthday dinner_ my father had in mind to put together.”

“ _What_?”

He laughs. “Brienne, I don’t think you’re quite grasping that he sees nothing wrong with anything he’s ever done _and_ that my sister agrees with him, and they’re _still_ telling me that I should quit my hard-earned TA position and go to work for his company, of course they’re organizing the birthday dinner. But whatever, my sister can attend it for the both of us. It’s not as if it wasn’t her show every other time.” He sounds so bitter she almost flinches, and she doesn’t press on that. She has a feeling he’s working through it and she should just let him.

“Well, don’t worry, this specific _surprise_ has nothing to do with your sister.”

“Good,” he says, and she drives in silence for another ten minutes, hoping that this won’t backfire, but —

She has thought about it, including the chances that it might backfire, and she doesn’t think it will _hurt_ , if anything.

She takes the next exit and drives on for a few minutes, until she’s right where she wanted to be.

“Brienne?” Jaime asks as she parks. “Is there a reason why we’re in front of some factory that’s been abandoned for the last century, at least?”

“There is,” she says, “and I picked it exactly for _one_ reason. Come on, get out.”

He doesn’t look too convinced, but he follows her out of the car — good thing that she came here before when checking if it was ideal for what she had in mind and she had brought with everything they needed.

For that matter, she doubts anyone might have stolen what she brought here yesterday, and when she leads him to the back of the place, here are the boxes, right in front of the gray, aging wall full of graffiti that most likely weren’t covered with any more since the seventies.

All three of them.

“… Is there anything in the box?” He asks, and she rolls her eyes at the pun, not that she doesn’t like that movie.

“There is,” she says, opening the first one. She reaches down and takes out a sturdy glass that she got for a minimal fee from Davos Seaworth, as in, the saintly man who runs the pub under her house who, when she asked him the week before if he could sell her a box of those cheap glasses he serves water in for reasons, said that he had three of them that he couldn’t use because at some point he switched for a new brand and those just stayed in his cellar. He wanted to gift them to her for that matter, but she refused.

Then she turns towards him — he seems kind of confused.

“What —”

“There are three boxes,” she says, “and each of them has thirty-six of these in it.”

“Okay, but why would you buy one hundred or so glasses and bring them _here_?”

She smiles tentatively, then walks a few feet behind him, holding the thing in her hands.

“To do this,” she says, and throws it against the wall.

She has a _mean_ throw, she knows it, and the moment it hits it, the glass shatters with a clash, and for a moment he looks horrified that she’d do that, but then his eyes go wide in understanding, his lips parting slightly. “You mean —”

She drags the boxes to their position, then leans down and hands him another. “I _mean_ , while I will never have a problem with your fondness for plastic plates, it’s not healthy that you get covered in cold sweat the moment you go near anything with glass in it, and — it hurts _you_ , and it’s not a good thing, and your father had no right. So — well. No one’s around here and no one will be, you have enough of these things to tire yourself out, _no one_ will give a single shit about these which I paid ten quid in _total_ exactly so you could break them at your leisure and if — if you want to, _maybe_ you should be able to do it without worrying someone will think they’re worth more than _you_ are,” she blurts, and it sounded better in her own head, but then he gives her a very, very serious nod and he takes the glass, his hand shaking so hard she thinks he’ll drop it (but if he does, _fine_ , that’s the point).

He doesn’t drop it.

He takes a step back, breathes in, moves his arm backward and then throws it toward the wall.

Not a mean throw such as _hers_ , but it still shatters, joining the other one’s pieces on the floor.

He’s breathing hard after that, as if he can’t believe he’s just done it, and she wants to ask him if he’s fine, but then he immediately grabs another one and throws it against the wall, _harder_ , and he grimaces a bit when it hits the wall, _but_ , she can see that it was a good thing in how he’s holding himself up — he’s nowhere near as stiff as before.

He does it a third time.

This time, that glass hits the wall so hard that it breaks into _way_ more pieces than the other two.

“Woah, _okay_ , I think — I think I get the point.”

“Who were you thinking of when you threw that one?” She asks, trying to not show how she is relieved that he took it in stride rather than assuming she was overstepping boundaries.

“My illustrious father, who else,” he says, shaking his head. His hand is still wildly shaking as he grabs the fourth glass. “You know, you _could_ help me out here.”

“They’re _your_ birthday present, not mine.”

“Yeah, what if I want to share? Or do you just surrender because you know I’d break more at the same time?”

 _What_?

“Are you seriously suggesting you want to see who can break more in the same time?”

It’s not like he never smiles when it’s around her or other people, but it’s tentative now, and kind of _sweet,_ actually, and — she doesn’t want to say her stomach is flipping itself over, but _it kind of is_.

Shit, she has a feeling they both look like two fourteen year-olds doing this shit out of seeing if they can get away with it, but then again, they _never_ could be that kind of person back when they actually were teens, so… why not?

“Fine,” she says, “you asked for it.”

Then she grabs one of the other glasses herself.

——

“Well,” she says after the third box is gone and the entirety of the ground in front of them is littered in pieces of glass, “ _I_ win.”

“By _one_ ,” he mock-complains.

“It was _your_ idea, I was going to let you have all of them.”

“I know,” he says, suddenly sounding a lot more serious. He flexes the fingers of his right hand — still not bending properly, but she can’t care less and he _did_ throw some of those glasses with _that_ one, and he threw them particularly hard. She can live with it. “And — you know what, it was fun.”

“Was it now?”

“I didn’t think it could be, but — after the first one? It was. Why, what did you have in mind?”

“Cathartic, but I guess that if it was fun, it _did_ work out the way I meant to.”

“Well, now for _that_ , I guess I should trash both that damned crystal statue _and_ the glass that I technically own and are still at my father’s place, but I have a feeling he’s never going to let me have them back. Still, it did work.”

“Good,” she says, “and the day you want to get those two and you might need help, I’m available.”

“I see you’re _really_ set on this destructing glass business, aren’t you?”

“From what you’ve said, I think I’m more set on making sure your father gets a few ulcers from that.”

He bursts out laughing, his hand going to her shoulder, and maybe when she still hadn’t gone through guys asking her out on a bet and imagined of how she’d run into the man of her dreams one day and they’d go on dates and exchange cheesy romantic gifts like it happened to the other _pretty_ girls in the movies… she certainly hadn’t thought that her dates with the man of her dreams would turn into breaking an insane amount of glasses rather than going to the movies, but she thinks she likes it better like this — she never was much for doing things the _expected_ way, anyhow, and it’s never worked too well for her.

“You know what, I’m inviting you to dinner at his place and expecting you to break _at least_ a few plates,” he says, still grinning.

“You can count on me, but you do know that we have to clean that up before we leave? I’m not potentially killing stray cats passing by because we left all of that glass out in the open.”

“Sure you wouldn’t leave it,” he says, “but I _think_ there’s something else I want to do first. By the way, best present _ever_ ,” he goes on, obviously meaning it, and a moment later his mouth is on hers, and fine, at twelve years old she’d have never fantasized about frenching the man of her dreams in front of _that_ amount of broken glass in the middle of nowhere, but as it is? She thinks she wouldn’t have it any other way, and if he was serious about asking her to break his father’s china plates…

Well, she was _entirely_ serious about doing it.

 

_Five_

 

“Oh, I am _awfully_ sorry,” Brienne says, looking like the picture of innocence as pieces of that red and gold crystal glass of Jaime’s litter the ground.

Tyrion is impressed, honestly. He hadn’t known his brother’s girlfriend had it in her, not from what he had seen of her, but he obviously was wrong, because she’s actually _holding his father’s stare_ as if she’s daring him to ask her to pick it up with her bare fingers.

Suddenly, he has a feeling that when Jaime told her that she could have his old precious glass for their engagement dinner that their father _insisted_ had to happen at the house even if they had said they wanted to have it at _their_ place, they had agreed on it beforehand. Sure as hell Jaime is trying to not burst out laughing, while Cersei looks outraged and their father, _well_ , he looks like ten ulcers spread in his gut at once, and Tyrion wishes he had the guts to do it with his own glass, but — no. _She_ can get away with it because not only even his father knows that being an ass to your future daughter in law that your son is _definitely_ going to marry is not a good idea, but when said daughter in law is one meter and ninety-something, has larger shoulders than Jaime’s and boxes in her free time, it might be the worst idea in existence.

Also, it’s not like he doesn’t know _why,_ if they agreed on it, _she_ did it. If Jaime did —

Tyrion remembers his childhood even too well, but that time with the vase? He remembers _every damned second of it_ and he thinks _that_ was what had convinced him that it was wasted time to even try to get along with his fucking father, and if he’s getting even a small modicum of payback, well, fuck him. Serves him right. If it was up to him, he’d throw the entire crystal collection in the trash, but it’s not. Sadly.

Still, the fact that Brienne is doing it without batting an eyelid is in itself worthy of perpetual admiration, given that usually just meeting Tywin Lannister installs in people the fear of whatever deity they believe in, but apparently Brienne’s handled worse, because right now, she only seems to enjoy watching him blanch at the sight. Then she looks at _Jaime_. “I — honestly, I didn’t even notice it was in the way. I can’t believe I broke it,” she goes on, always the picture of innocence.

“Hey,” he says, “it’s fine, it could have happened to anyone. And I barely even used it anyway, no harm done.” And then he moves his right hand over hers, their fingers threading together, and —

Fuck. Cersei is _fuming_ but she obviously can’t say shit, their father is _beyond_ enraged but after all that glass was _Jaime’_ s so it’s his business to get pissed about it breaking or not, those two are looking at each other like two people who _absolutely planned it_ and can’t wait to actually tie the knot, and Tyrion has a feeling that Brienne Tarth won’t get any more invitations to dinner in _here_.

Well, too bad for his father, because as far as _he_ is concerned, he’s wholly in favor of this engagement.

 

End.


End file.
